Like all political autobiographies, the story of Thomas Mulcair’s journey to manhood — published under the title Strength of Conviction — is impossible to judge on solely literary terms.

Ever since U.S. president Barack Obama launched his political career with the memoir Dreams From My Father, books of this nature have become standard pre-campaign fare. It’s an affectation Canadians have adopted with considerable enthusiasm, most recently with Olivia Chow’s My Journey, and Justin Trudeau’s Common Ground. (One almost has to admire Stephen Harper for bucking the trend by offering a book about … the rise of professional hockey.)

So, Mulcair’s book isn’t really a book. It’s a 180-page cover letter. It’s an autobiography and a platform, a plea for consideration; it’s a life remembered in soft focus. The title is entirely appropriate.

Mulcair concedes no mistakes here. Gone is the caustic, even angry, Mulcair of reputation. The NDP leader — now surging in the polls and a plausible contender for Prime Minister — is always right. Every clash is chalked up to his unwillingness to bend in the face of inviolable principle.

His recounting of one of the dramatic of such disputes, the falling out with Quebec Primer Jean Charest, after being appointed to cabinet as minister of environment, is fuzzy, incomplete. He remembers the post fondly, and glosses over the details of its termination; Mulcair writes of the period without the self-awareness to give the reader a satisfying understanding. The minister was eventually called to Charest’s carpet and offered a lesser post; Mulcair refuses to be demoted — on principle, of course. He trundles over to the backbenches, instead, insinuating here that the fight centred around a controversial plan to transfer provincial park lands over to a developer.

The world is rarely so clear cut as this.

But that’s what Mulcair is selling: he positions himself here as the hero of an unambiguous narrative.
There is no grey, no nuance. There are good guys and there are bad guys. Mulcair is the willing avatar for the side wearing the white hats. There is little hint of the ego and ambition that must be present in any contender for Prime Minister.

During the length of the book — which takes us from early childhood to his current age of 60 — only one man merits Mulcair’s vitriol: Stephen Harper. Mulcair tries to make concessions to western Canada, even to the oil industry. But the Prime Minister or his policies are mentioned at least a dozen times.

Meanwhile, I could not find a single reference to Justin Trudeau. There are a few shots fired at the Liberal Party, generally, but Justin’s father, Pierre, shows up more often than the man who currently threatens Mulcair’s left flank.

Mulcair has also lived knee-deep in the trenches during two of the most fascinating episodes of Quebec’s modern political history, fighting on on the side of the federalists during the 1995 referendum, and being instrumental to the 2011 Orange Crush which vaulted the NDP to official opposition

Here it’s possible to divine a bit of the NDP’s coming election strategy. In short, the party needs to present the coming campaign as a straightforward fight between the left and the right, with the NDP the clear representatives of the left. The Conservatives, on the other hand, are depending on a continued split of the progressive vote.

Strength of Conviction also offers a degree of political inoculation. Mulcair brushes off the Conservatives’ attempts to woo him as an unserious consideration. He explains his dual citizenship; his wife is French and he didn’t like being split from his family in the passport line while on vacation. He would, of course, renounce his French passport if elected Prime Minister. Mulcair’s dual nationality is of no serious concern beyond the Conservatives’ ability to make it one.

As a book, in and of itself, there is much to praise in Strength of Conviction. It’s straightforward, clearly written, and easy to read. It’s intended for a broad, popular audience. Mulcair’s voice is apparent in the reading; the narrative is well paced. It doesn’t get bogged down in backroom tactics or strategy.

Mulcair has also lived knee-deep in the trenches during two of the most fascinating episodes of Quebec’s modern political history, fighting on on the side of the federalists during the 1995 referendum, and being instrumental to the 2011 Orange Crush which vaulted the NDP to official opposition — an unprecedented political wave that began in Quebec and may yet continue west and east.

The leader offers insight into the nature of Quebec politics, the underlying currents that he the NDP ably tapped. Even those who aren’t terribly politically inclined will find value here. And as long as one maintains awareness that this is an extensive piece of campaign literature, there’s something to be gleaned for the common voter, as well.

One walks away from the book feeling that Mulcair is a man with a keenly felt set of values, and a willingness, even a desire, to fight for what he believes to be right.

It’s easy to find comfort in the fact that such a man is serving as leader of the official opposition.
But Prime Minister?

The Quebec government is ordering hospitals and other health facilities to slash $150 million from their budgets for medical tests, imaging scans and procedures to patients that it has judged are not “pertinent to care,” the Montreal Gazette has learned.

In total, the Health Department is aiming to chop $583 million in spending through so-called optimization measures. And in a bizarre twist, the government has decided that it won’t provide hospitals funding for next year’s leap year day, Feb. 29, which will fall on a Monday, saving it $64 million.

It’s up to hospitals to cover the shortfall on that day out of their own already diminished budgets.

One of the biggest cutbacks will take place at the McGill University Health Centre, which last year was forced to cut $50 million from its operating budget. It must now reduce its spending by an extra $21 million.

Of all the “optimization measures,” the most controversial is compelling doctors to stop ordering tests that the government is now considering “unnecessary” in the context of fiscal austerity. Patient rights advocates and managers in the health system are warning that this sets a dangerous precedent, opening the door to ageism and the prospect of clinicians no longer performing tests for people above a certain age.

AP Photo / Duke Medicine, Shawn RoccoOf all the “optimization measures,” the most controversial is compelling doctors to stop ordering tests that the government is now considering “unnecessary” in the context of fiscal austerity.

Reducing the number of tests in the public system could also result in an increase in the number of tests in private clinics. Health Minister Gaétan Barrette has said he plans to propose legislation in August that would permit private clinics to start charging patients fees for some tests and procedures that would otherwise be covered under medicare in the public system.

Paul Brunet, president of the Conseil pour la protection des malades, expressed concern about the potential unintended consequences of the government’s cost-cutting measures.

“Oh yeah, certainly patient care will suffer,” Brunet said. “Long-term care facilities are going to take most of the hit. We know that.”

Some institutions, however, have signalled to the government that they won’t cut the number of medical tests.

“At this stage, it’s out of the question to reevaluate the pertinence of medical tests for patients,” said Joëlle Lachapelle, a spokesperson for the Centre hospitalier de l’université de Montreal.

(A standard complete blood count test, for example, costs a hospital $5.77, while a private clinic will charge more than $60 for it. Private insurance would cover most, if not all, of the latter fee.)

The CHUM must cut $15.4 million in its 2015-2016 budget, and of that sum, $11.3 million is supposed to come from an optimization measure called “pertinence of care and physical health services.”

Lachapelle said the CHUM will focus on reducing overtime rather than cutting the number of tests and procedures.

Joanne Beauvais, Barrette’s press attaché, denied that the government is pressuring hospitals to cut patient care.

“We are not cutting funding for care, but implementing measures to help clinical professionals provide better care by foregoing tests and procedures that are expensive and shown not to result in either improved recovery or better diagnostics,” Beauvais responded in an email.

“We expect the progress we will be making over the next year to yield recurrent savings of $150 million.”

The $583 million in “optimization” savings breaks down as follows:

• Cutting $220 million in payroll costs by abolishing 1,300 management positions.
• Avoiding “unnecessary” (Beauvais’s word) tests and procedures, saving $150 million.
• Not funding leap year day: $64 million.
• Persuading hospitals to team up in buying goods and services to save $35 million.
• Additional “compressions” that are unspecified: $114 million.
• The CHUM will have to cut through attrition 15 managers out of 337. The MUHC, in contrast, will have to cut more than 100 managers out of 459. A cloud of fear and anxiety has descended over the managerial ranks at both the CHUM and MUHC.

Ian Popple, a spokesperson for the MUHC, said the reduction in the number of managers will be carried out over three years.

“Part of the reduction will be done by attrition as managers leave or retire,” he explained. “Other reductions will have to occur by transforming some manager positions into professional-level positions (that pay less) in order to meet the ministry target. We are looking at every option, but there remains a shortfall that is requiring ongoing work to address.”

Beauvais dismissed the notion that the government is actually making cuts:

“These are not cuts. Quebec cannot afford the kind of growth rate in health-care spending we experienced over the past decades, and the system is clearly able to do more with less. The best-performing teams in the network prove it. Since the health-care budget keeps growing, those measures are not cuts. They are a strong inducement to everyone in the system to improve their game.”

Quebec has budgeted $32.8 billion this fiscal year on health care, an increase of 1.4 per cent, but less than the 5-per-cent annual hikes of previous years.

Re: Calling Out Mulcair On Quebec, editorial, July 23.The New Democratic Party’s constitution requires a super-majority for at least one internal party process. How can something as important as Quebec separation logically be triggered by what amounts to the whim of one last solitary voter?

Also, the NDP should explain which “50 per cent plus one” will decide the next referendum: will it be half-plus-one of all votes cast, or half-plus-one of those accepted by the returning officers, who are appointed by the Quebec government?

After the 1995 sovereignty referendum, the 86,000 disputed ballots were destroyed. But all available evidence suggests well more than half of them were, in fact, legitimate No votes. At the time Mulcair spoke of “an orchestrated effort” to invalidate many No votes. The frightening risk that a referendum could be stolen in this way is another powerful reason why a super-majority must be the standard.Brian Kappler, Montreal.

Mulcair does not have a realistic view of the political situation in Quebec. Parti Québécois Leader Pierre Karl Péladeau has significant support (34 per cent) in the May 2015 Quebec Sondage Leger-Le Devoir poll. The Liberals are at 32 per cent. Péladeau is a charismatic leader, who has a real chance to form the next government of Quebec in 2018. Mulcair ignores the very real possibility of a separatist government being elected.

Péladeau has stated quite clearly and often by electing him leader the PQ has given a clear mandate to transform Quebec into a country. He has every intention to plunge the province back into the constitutional quagmire.

Mulcair defends the NDP Sherbrooke Declaration of 2005 by stating Quebec should be granted specific powers and room for manoeuvring. As prime minister of Canada, he would recognize a referendum victory of 50 per cent plus one to break up Canada.

He claims that just by insuring middle-class prosperity, he would counter any thoughts of a sovereignty referendum in the future by Quebecers. What crystal ball is he looking in to? Mulcair is playing a dangerous game with the unity of Canada to just to garner votes in Quebec.Russell O’Brien, Waterloo, Ont.

Golden girl

Re: Pan Am Notebook, July 23.Melissa Bishop not only won Pan Am gold, but she won a place in my heart. A comely Canadian female smashing the women’s 800-metre world record by some 54 seconds? It doesn’t get any better than that. Get ready for a tickertape parade.Randall Bell, Whitby, Ont.

Wait times

Re: Mother With Sick Child Says Strangers Kept Car From Being Towed, July 23.While I applaud the kindness of strangers in Barrie, Ont., helping this mother out, the sad subtext to the story was her nearly nine-hour wait for care of her sick son. We need to have a grown-up conversation about health-care delivery in this country. The fact is the status quo and nine-hour waits should not be acceptable to any taxpayer.Rob Nieuwesteeg, Calgary.

Taste of own medicine

Re: Cadets Used As ‘Lab Rats’ In Pepper Spray Study, July 23.Regarding the use of cadets as “lab rats” for testing pepper spray, while in cadet school, bravo. They are in their seventh week, not their first so they know they have probably made the cut. Pepper spray and stun guns will probably not ever be used or tested on full-fledged officers, so this is as close as they will get. I am not an advocate of civil disobedience, but this sort of “taste your own medicine” approach when using these products might have spared poor Robert Dziekanski his awful fate.Nick Moar, Calgary.

Joe Blow not G.I. Joe

Re: Civilians Guarding Military, July 23.U.S. gun makers keep pouring out their toxic products for civilian sale, it will be yet another windfall for them should all military recruitment centres have to be armed. Such are the wages of a country in which less than eight per cent of all the military-style firearms are in the hands of the military and police. The fact any Joe Blow can walk around with weapons once reserved for G.I. Joe contributes mightily to the need the NSA feels to spy on all American citizens, since it’s never easy to predict just which gun owners harbour delusions or malice.Ron Charach, Toronto.

Trudeau’s decline

Re: Trudeau Falls To New Low In Poll, John Ivison, July 23.With limited experience, it was only a matter of time before the traction gained from his father’s name, would be undermined by his making serious gaffes, causing Canadians to take a careful look at Justin Trudeau’s ability to run Canada. He has also taken the Liberals further left than any of his predecessors, raising questions within his party.

Initially, Trudeau was greatly assisted by an adoring media, who saw him having the best chance of defeating Stephen Harper. With NDP Leader Tom Mulcair’s rise in the polls, he is now the media darling, while they have abandoned Trudeau.Larry Comeau, Ottawa.

Trump said it

Re: The Truth Of Trump, letter to the editor, July 23.Letter-writer JoAnn Braem says Sen. John McCain started the contretemps by calling Donald Trump supporters “crazy.” If she is wondering where he got the notion crazy Republicans support Trump, she might turn to a National Politics report that appeared in New York Times on Oct. 25, 1999. It includes this quote from Trump about why he was joining the Reform Party: “I really believe the Republicans are just too crazy right.”

I believe him. As Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.” So, is Trump, as Braem says, a teller of truths?Al Lando, Toronto.

Donald Trump speaks his mind and doesn’t dance around the truth as most politicians frequently do. People do like him because he is anti-politics. He is sort of the anti-hero, but in the end they won’t vote for him. He is the bad boy of politics, but the suitor always chooses someone more traditional for a stable marriage.

Trump will make the campaign interesting, but he will also probably kill the Republicans’ chance at the White House this time. Donald may have the trump card, but the ace is in the hands of Hillary Clinton.Douglas Cornish, Ottawa.

‘Just read the Qur’an’

Re: Islamist, Not Islamic, letter to the editor, July 21.Letter writer Fasih Malik asks, “How could anyone associate this terrorist (Abdulazeez) with the same religion that is practised by more than 1.6 billion people?” Answer: “easily.” Just read the Qur’an, and the Hadiths and you will be informed and not deceived.

“Fight for Allah’s cause (jihad).” (Q2:24) “Fight them (the kufars, the non-Muslims) until … the religion of Allah reigns absolute.” (Q2:193). Malik mentions that Muhammad teaches loyalty for one’s country. The Islamist is taught that his primary loyalty is for Allah’s cause (jihad) and Shariah law. This by far supersedes his loyalty for democracy, liberty and free speech, with which God has blessed us and with which Islam is not at all compatible. Islam assures Paradise to Abdulazeez, Hassan, the Islamic killer of the 13 soldiers in Fort Hood, Tex., and other killers of Jews and Christians.John Stefan Obeda, London, Ont.

Cat out of the bag

Re: Will Bill Cosby Ever Face Prosecution?, July 22.To be fair: until now, we only had decades old accusations that could not be proved either way. It should be noted one of Cosby’s accusers claims the deed occurred at the Playboy mansion when she was 15. This raises the question: who allowed a 15-year-old girl inside what amounts to little more than a high-end brothel? That said, with the release of these court documents, sworn under oath, I would say, Now, we have a problem.Jerry Pryde, Stoney Creek, Ont.

Public vs. private broadcasting

Re: Senators Urge New CBC Funding Model, July 21; CBC under Siege, July 22.Ian Morrison of the Friends of CBC complains proposed Senate changes would render the public broadcaster nothing more that “a transmitter of programs that are conceived and thought up by private interests.” Imagine that, Canadians might hear the news and current events from the view of people who don’t work for the government.Lee Eustace, Toronto.

I watch the CBC enough to know this: On CBC Newsworld, there are talking heads working two-hour shifts during the day, asking someone in London or Washington to explain something in Turkey or Kansas. Question: why the remote middleman?

The talking heads’ two-hour shifts often include a repeat of the news covered in the first hour. They don’t talk continuously. Film coverage takes up a significant amount of airtime.

Not only did the CBC not have the brains to broadcast the Pan Am gold medal baseball game live on the main network, the guy who did the play-by-play online was a volunteer. And you don’t think I want to close the CBC down.Douglas L. Martin, Hamilton, Ont.

In praise of virtue

Re: The Tomb Of Virtue, Barbara Kay, July 22.Barbara Kay wisely points out an example of how important the habits of virtue are. Because the people of the church in Charleston, S.C., had learned the virtues their religion taught, we were saved from watching another tragedy unfold and instead had a great example presented to us of how beautiful virtue is.

Becoming a virtuous person is no easy job, but it is something we all need to be taking much more seriously, as Kay points out. Just imagine, if we all learned to be virtuous, we might actually be able to see peace on earth some day.Dianne Wood, Newmarket, Ont.

The nuclear conundrum

Re: The Case For The Iran Deal, John Kerry and Ernest Moniz, July 24.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s robust denouncement of the Iranian nuclear deal certainly has not curried favour with Washington, but when the only democracy in the Middle East is surrounded on all sides by Arab countries bent on wiping it off the face of the earth, his defeat over the Iranian nuclear deal is perplexing and troubling. If Western countries do not pony up in their defence of Israel, future headlines may read, “So goes Israel — so goes the world.”Paul Stevens, Milton, Ont.

The U.S. secretaries of state and energy admit the temporary nature of the restrictions this agreement places on the Iranian pursuit of nuclear arms. They tout the safeguards of “snap-back” sanctions in preventing breaches of the agreement, while knowing full well once China, Russia and Europe resume profiting from business with the ayatollahs, there can be no effective reinstatement of sanctions.

President Barack Obama has argued the necessity for this agreement as a choice between war and peace. He intentionally omits the fact sanctions were having an immense effect on the power of the Iranian regime. Their removal and the release of billions of dollars have thrown a lifeline to the Iranian regime and will enable the ayatollahs to fund global terror.

The bottom line is this. an agreement is only worth the willingness of its signatories to adhere to it. Iran has shown numerous times it does not keep its words, and more so, after the agreement was signed, its leaders have already declared their intentions to avoid compliance with its salient safeguards.Steve Samuel, Toronto.

If I hadn’t seen the name of the author, Secretary of State John Kerry, I would have thought this article had been written by the leader of the Iranian negotiating group or by George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.Harold Reiter, Thornhill, Ont.

Israel’s right

Re: Human Rights Not The Issue, letter to the editor, July 22.Since letter-writer Terry Greenberg apparently operates under the misimpression “singling-out” Iran is akin to “singling-out” Israel, allow me to explain why that equation is fallacious.

While Israel may, during the course of its continuing fight for survival, commit “human rights abuses” as the United Nations and its critics and enemies understand them (for example, by constructing “apartheid” barriers and checkpoints that have prevented Palestinian terrorists from entering Israel and wreaking havoc as they have done in the past), here’s the salient — and glaring — difference between the two countries: Iran is a totalitarian Shiite theocracy helmed by megalomaniacs who view the Jewish state as an alien and toxic presence in the Middle East and the world at large (which is not unlike how another megalomaniac, a German one, viewed Jewry in another time) and whose mantra “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”

Israel is the region’s sole democracy that is looking to live in peace with its neighbours, including Iran. No one in Israel is chanting “Death to Iran.” That said, Israel has every right to defend itself against an implacable enemy that seeks its destruction and may soon have the nuclear means to follow through on its threats.Mindy G. Alter, Toronto.

Winners form governments

Re: Decoding The Coalition Government, July 24.I am loathe to correct Carissima Mathen, but the Conservative Party, as the government, has the constitutional right to “meet the house” regardless, if it wins 168 seats or 16 seats. Now, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said “winners form government” so perhaps a new convention will emerge that the “leader who’s returned the most number of seats” forms a government. Practical realities might also decide the issue. But, for now, the Conservatives get first crack at mustering a majority, regardless of the result.Ranjan Agarwal, Toronto.

MONTREAL — The country’s largest tobacco firms will not have to make an immediate $1-billion payment to Quebec smokers who won a landmark class-action suit.

In a ruling Thursday, the Quebec Court of Appeal said it could be problematic for the companies to recoup the money if they are eventually successful in appealing a judgment ordering them to pay $15.6 billion.

The initial $1.13-billion payment was due this Sunday after a judge ordered it handed over to smokers within 60 days of his ruling.

Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and JTI-Macdonald have appealed the overall decision that saw a Quebec judge rule that they must fork over the $15.6 billion to smokers who either fell ill or couldn’t quit the habit.

Lawyers for all three firms argued earlier this month they simply didn’t have the funds to cover the $1.13 billion, saying it could cause irreparable harm to their ability to appeal and even put them on the brink of bankruptcy.

They also argued the amount would not be recoverable if they eventually won on appeal.

The appeal court touched on that point in its ruling.

“There is the nagging issue of reimbursement if appellants succeed on appeal,” the panel of three justices wrote.

“The potential necessity of seeking reimbursement of $10,000 from each of 100,000 class members is by any objective standard a prejudice that cannot be ignored.”

Imperial Tobacco welcomed the ruling.

They (the companies) were successful but the court made it very clear in this ruling that they’re only successful on this particular pre-payment. They said it was administratively difficult to see how the money could come back

“We knew all along that we had very strong grounds to appeal and today’s (Thursday’s) unanimous decision confirms that there was no legal basis for ordering the provisional execution,” said Tamara Gitto, vice-president law & general counsel.

The executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada said she wasn’t unduly disappointed by the decision.

“No, not really, because it was a bit of a sideshow,” Cynthia Callard said in an interview. “It would have been very nice. It was important symbolically that the initial judge recognized that people needed money.

“It was a very nice add-on but the big show is yet to come.”

“They (the companies) were successful but the court made it very clear in this ruling that they’re only successful on this particular pre-payment. They said it was administratively difficult to see how the money could come back.”

The case stemmed from two 1998 suits that were consolidated, with the first witnesses heard only in 2012.
Cecilia Letourneau filed on behalf of the province’s smokers who were addicted to nicotine and remained addicted or who died without quitting — some 918,218 people.

The other was filed by the late Jean-Yves Blais and sought compensatory and punitive damages for smokers who’d suffered from cancer in their lungs, larynx or throat, or emphysema. That group was comprised of 99,957 people.

For the plaintiffs under Blais, an expert testified at the trial that 85 per cent would be dead within five years.

The lawsuit is believed to be the biggest class-action ever seen in Canada, and lawyers have acknowledged the appeals process could take several years and likely end up in the Supreme Court of Canada.

In ordering the three firms to split the $15.6 billion as follows: 67 per cent to Imperial Tobacco ($10.5 billion),
20 per cent to Rothmans, Benson & Hedges ($3.1 billion) and 13 per cent to JTI-Macdonald ($2 billion), Quebec

Superior Court Justice Brian Riordan wrote that they chose profits over people’s health.

The Liberals are said to be redeploying artillery to their left flank, where Thomas Mulcair and his New Democrats have for now usurped the title of Progressive Alternative in the polls. Notably, all and Grit sundry have been demanding to know why the NDP “wants to make it easier for Quebec to leave Canada,” or words to that effect, by replacing the Clarity Act with what the party calls the Unity Bill.

Related

The legislation would enshrine “the majority of valid votes” on a clear question in a sovereignty referendum as the threshold for triggering constitutional negotiations, replacing the Clarity Act’s “clear majority.” The latter is language taken straight from the Supreme Court’s 1998 reference on the secession of Quebec: “that a clear majority of Quebecers votes on a clear question in favour of secession” will necessitate negotiations. Absent that majority, the Clarity Act stipulates, the federal government cannot enter into such discussions.

The Supreme Court’s reference is not as clear as it could be on what it means by “clear majority”: at times, it doesn’t seem to rule out that 50 per cent plus one could be sufficient; at other times it seems like the word “clear” can’t mean anything unless it’s more than that. By virtue of its simplicity, perhaps, it’s this issue that gets all the press. As many have noted, Holyrood and Westminster agreed on 50 per cent plus one for the Scottish referendum. But you’ll find no support in this column for betting the country on a one-vote majority.

You also won’t find much worry, however. As an example of a clear question, the Unity Act proposes: “Should Quebec become a sovereign country?” There has never been a prospect of 50 per cent minus five support for such a question in Quebec, never mind plus one, and it’s doubtful there ever will be. (The Unity Act does vouchsafe “any question the wording of which has been the subject of an agreement between the Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec. But that’s only scary if you believe Mulcair is some kind of stealth separatist, which is one of the very stupidest theories currently on offer in Canadian politics.)

It’s mass delusion, and the NDP are reinforcing it. The Supreme Court reference could not be any clearer that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada unilaterally.

The Unity Bill is worrying for more complex reasons. One, it only concerns Quebec, whereas the Clarity Act applies, as it should, to all provinces. Two, it authorizes the Quebec Court of Appeal to rule on the disputed clarity of a referendum question, rather than properly leaving it to political actors. And three, having noted in its preamble the “obligation on all parties to Confederation to negotiate constitutional changes” in the event of a clear yes vote, it relegates to the “clarifications” section of the bill any mention of parties other than the governments of Canada and Quebec. This bolsters the preamble’s declaration that “the Quebec nation has the right to democratically decide its own future.”

It is here that the NDP can be most fairly criticized for pandering to Quebec voters — though by no means just separatist or hard-nationalist ones. A 2013 Harris-Decima poll found 57 per cent support among Quebecers for the Unity Bill; every other region was firmly opposed. No party in the National Assembly supports the Clarity Act. Each speaks as if Quebec can go ahead and separate if it wants to. “I have always said that the future of Quebec will be decided in Quebec by the Québécois,” Liberal Premier Philippe Couillard said in the dying days of the 2014 election campaign. It’s mass delusion, and the NDP are reinforcing it. The Supreme Court reference could not be any clearer that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada unilaterally.

As the Unity Bill acknowledges, a sovereignty referendum seeks nothing more or less than a constitutional amendment, and there’s nothing in the constitution about referendums. All parties to confederation would be obligated to respond in good faith to a clearly expressed desire for said amendment, the court ruled. But “while the negotiators would have to contemplate the possibility of secession, there would be no absolute legal entitlement to it and no assumption that an agreement reconciling all relevant rights and obligations would actually be reached,” the court wrote. “It is foreseeable that even negotiations carried out in conformity with the underlying constitutional principles could reach an impasse.”

No kidding. There have been two notable constitutional impasses involving Quebec in recent decades.

It is a delicate operation the Liberals are undertaking here: trying to make hay on the NDP’s purported weakness on federalism without angering Quebec voters who think as Couillard does. On the list of things that would give me pause about voting NDP, national unity isn’t even in the top 10. And I suspect that’s the case for a great many Canadians who are happy, at least for now, to see Quebec remain part of Canada.

To my mind, the New Democrats are far more vulnerable on another big-ticket item that the Liberals are focusing on: the party’s incredibly audacious pledge to institute mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) for the 2019 federal election. No committee to study various kinds of electoral reform, as the Liberals have proposed; and no referendum, as Ontario and British Columbia have held in the past on proportional representation. They’ll just do it.

“If we seek that mandate and gain that mandate, we will see that as an opportunity to affect the voting system,” MP Nathan Cullen told the Georgia Straight in a recent interview. “Canadians weren’t consulted when first-past-the-post was brought in. It was just done. We’ve never been consulted since. We’re going to do something a lot more democratic and fair.”

Points for candour — we can’t say we weren’t warned. And even more points for guts — MMP has a nasty habit of infuriating people. It is vulnerable to charges it bolsters the power of political parties: one still votes for one’s preferred constituency MP, but one also votes for one’s preferred party, which provides a list of candidates to be sprinkled in amongst local MPs to ensure the seat tally reflects the popular vote. The NDP claims its preferred system avoids these pitfalls by allowing voters either to endorse the party list or to choose someone on the list over the others — but those MPs would still be beholden chiefly to the party, even more so than our MPs already are.

A 2010 Environics poll found great support for proportional representation as a concept: 63 per cent in favour and just 30 per cent opposed nationally. But the devil is in the details of the system. Stripped of the aforementioned subtleties in election debates and advertising, MMP must have considerable potential to backfire on the NDP. In 2010, 63 per cent of Ontarians told Environics they supported proportional representation; three years earlier, the exact same number voted against MMP in a referendum. Only five ridings were in favour, in all of which the federal NDP are already elected or competitive.

There’s nothing undemocratic about the NDP’s pledge, and it’s great that we’re talking about electoral reform (though I don’t support any form of proportional representation in the House of Commons). But considering the result in Ontario, turning MMP specifically into a ballot question seems not just politically risky but far from ideal procedurally. A national vote would be a referendum, for once, that everyone should welcome.

A man whose drive from New Brunswick to Quebec to buy cheaper beer ended in arrest said Thursday he’s looking forward to airing his constitutional challenge in court next month as a defence crowdfunding campaign gets underway.

In an interview from Tracadie, N.B., Gerard Comeau said he just wants to know whether he has the right to buy his beer in Quebec.

“The Canadian Constitution says you’ve got the right to go buy any Canadian merchandise in any province and bring it from one province to the next,” Comeau said.

“So is it against the law? That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

As part of a sting operation, RCMP arrested Comeau, now 62, in October 2012 when he returned with 12 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor which he bought legally in Pointe-a-la-Croix, Que., just across the river from Campbellton. Police seized the booze and charged him with illegally importing alcohol into his home province.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan RemiorzBeer is advertised for sale outside a store in Drummondville, Que., on Thursday, July 23, 2015.

Cross-border alcohol shopping is a regular thing in the area and the retired power lineman had been making the run two or three times a year into Quebec to score beer which costs about half the New Brunswick price and lottery tickets.

However, provincial law in New Brunswick related to federal anti-smuggling efforts implemented at the height of Prohibition forbids importing more than one bottle of wine or 12 pints of beer about 19 regular bottles from any other province. The restrictions, stiffer than importing alcohol from the U.S., carry a $292.50 fine for violators.

Comeau’s case has drawn support from the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which this week launched a crowdfunding drive in an effort to raise $20,000 for a fight that seems destined to be decided by the Supreme Court of Canada.

“A lot of people don’t even know that provision is in the law,” Karen Selick, the foundation’s litigation director, said from Ottawa.

Constitutional experts will testify at the week-long hearing in Campbellton slated to start Aug. 24.

Besides offering an entertaining history lesson, the foundation said it wants Canadians to help back Comeau in a case it says is crucial to interprovincial trade.

Section 121 of the Constitution is supposed to allow for the free flow of goods across provincial borders but, Selick said, a Supreme Court decision dating to 1921 that narrowly interpreted the section is at the heart of the dispute.

“We think that case was wrongly decided and that enough time has gone by that the Supreme Court should look at it again,” Selick said.

The foundation, a registered charity that bills itself as an independent, non-partisan organization that aims to defend Canadian constitutional freedoms, said the trade barriers benefit government monopoly sales agencies while constraining private business and citizens.

As a result, billions of dollars in provincial revenues are at stake and could affect industries as diverse as eggs, poultry and dairy products.

Comeau said he doesn’t know what became of the alcohol police seized. But win or lose, he’s not keen to get it back.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is right to call out the New Democrats for their position on what would constitute a clear majority in any potential future referendum on Quebec sovereignty. “On issues such as national unity I think its important for anyone who wants to be prime minister and who disagrees with something like (the Clarity Act to) explain why,” said Trudeau.

Yet, the idea that a 50-per-cent-plus-one vote would constitute a clear majority of Quebecers has been NDP policy since its members approved the 2005 Sherbrooke Declaration, which reasons that, “the right to self-determination implies that (Quebec’s legislature) is able to write a referendum question and that the citizens of Quebec are able to answer it freely.”

Passed in 2000 — following the 1995 referendum and the Supreme Court’s Reference Re Secession of Quebec ruling in 1998 — the Clarity Act enumerates the conditions to be met by a province wishing to secede from Confederation. It requires that a clear majority vote for a clear question pertaining directly to secession, before the federal government will enter into negotiations with the province.

Has Mulcair considered that if Quebec leaves, his party will have almost no chance of governing what would be left of Canada?

Though the NDP supported the Clarity Act when it was passed, the Sherbrooke Declaration states that a plurality of voters would be sufficient — i.e., 50 per cent plus one. Ironically, the definition of a “clear majority” in the “Clarity” Act is not clear at all (though many commentators have argued that at least 60 per cent support would be required to meet that threshold). Yet, even if one quibbles over the exact meaning of the term, it remains in evident conflict with the “simple majority” supported by the New Democrats.

Without a doubt, political considerations are not absent from Trudeau’s comments on the subject, given the proximity of the next election and the charged nature of the subject of Quebec independence. But there is still a question of substance here: why is it, exactly, that Mulcair and his party believe it reasonable that one vote over the 50 per cent threshold should bring the feds and the rest of the provinces to the negotiating table? Why was both Parliament and the Supreme Court wrong to implement the guidelines that it did? If a referendum were to produce an otherwise-equal split of votes, a single voter who marked “yes” by mistake could break up the country.

Nor can political strategy be absent from the NDP’s policy. As acknowledged in the Sherbrooke Declaration, adopted when the NDP did not have a single seat in Quebec, the policy shift was part of a strategy to build a voter base in Quebec. With 59 of the party’s 103 seats earned in the 2011 election coming from the province, the NDP cannot afford to lose its existing support. Unfortunately, this may mean appealing to secessionists and “soft nationalists” who voted for them last time, in lieu of the Bloc Québécois.

At any rate, the campaign strategy here should take a proverbial back seat to the true matter at hand: what we’re talking about here is not just the minute policy differences between two centre-left parties, but the very future of our country. Has Mulcair considered that if Quebec leaves, his party will have almost no chance of governing what would be left of Canada? Perhaps that’s the price he’s willing to pay to win this time, but if so, he owes the country a thorough explanation.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/national-post-view-calling-out-mulcair-on-quebec/feed2stdThomas MulcairExplore Montreal’s history through its monuments, public art: Four must-sees among hundreds of pieceshttp://news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/explore-montreals-history-through-its-monuments-public-art-four-must-sees-among-hundreds-of-pieces
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Most of Montreal’s early public art consisted mainly of 19th-century monuments dedicated to historical figures and military battles.

“Monuments were used as a reflection of the various communities in Montreal,” says Dinu Bumbaru, policy director of Heritage Montreal. “The competition between the French and the English was also expressed in that.”

The stone column topped by a larger-than-life statue of the admiral was erected to commemorate the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian PressNelson's Column, a monument erected in 1809 at Place Jacques-Cartier dedicated to the memory of Admiral Horatio Nelson following his death at the Battle of Trafalgar, is seen July 17, 2015 in Montreal.

Bumbaru says the monument, which predates Nelson’s Column in London’s Trafalgar Square, was funded by public subscription. The donors included French Sulpician priests who seemed to have no qualms about contributing financially to pay tribute to a British war hero.

“We tend to think of Montreal as a sort of gated community: the French, the English, the other ones,” Bumbaru said. “The fact that you have a monument to a British admiral paid by French Catholic priests tells a lot about the…complexity of Montreal society.”

Old Montreal contains a trove of historical monuments within a few blocks of each other — some newer than others.

Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian PressPlace Vauquelin, and a statue in the memory of Jean Vauquelin (1728-1772), who was the French captain of a navy ship, which illustrated itself in the defence of Louisbourg during the seven-year war, is seen July 17, 2015 in Montreal.

A more recent statue in Old Montreal depicts Marguerite Bourgeoys, who founded several girls’ schools in the 1600s and was canonized in 1982. Artist Jules Lasalle shies away from traditional religious depictions in his 1988 sculpture and shows the pioneering educator leading two children through a fountain.

— Raymond Mason’s much-photographed “Illuminated Crowd“: a polyester-resin statue featuring a crowd of 65 people showing what the inscription calls “the flow of man’s emotion through space.” That is on downtown McGill College Avenue.

Even more art can be found within institutions such as universities and government buildings and even in the city’s subway, due partly to a government program that requires developers to allocate a fraction of their budget to art.

In a city known for festivals, Bumbaru says there’s an increasing desire among Montrealers to have a cultural contribution that’s more permanent.

“It ensures we’re a cultural city that can have different times and different seasons,” he said.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/explore-montreals-history-through-its-monuments-public-art-four-must-sees-among-hundreds-of-pieces/feed0stdThe Maisonneuve Monument by sculptor Louis-Philippe Hebert, built in 1895 in honour of Paul Chomedy de Maisoneuve at Place d'Armes.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian PressRyan Remiorz/The Canadian PressRyan Remiorz/The Canadian PressRachel Notley calls out Brad Wall: There are better ways to promote Energy East than ‘having a tantrum’http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rachel-notley-calls-out-brad-wall-there-are-better-ways-to-promote-energy-east-than-having-a-tantrum
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Premier Rachel Notley says she’s no pushover. She’ll never hand an Energy East pipeline veto to Quebec or Ontario. And we won’t see her throwing a tantrum in a corner.

That was Notley’s lively response, on the phone from St. John’s, N.L., to Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s suspicion that by courting approval for Alberta climate change policies, she’s effectively handing a pipeline veto to other provinces.

Clearly stung, Notley said: “I am not at all concerned with being perceived as a pushover. That has never been something that’s been part of my dynamic.

“I am saying that I understand that negotiations are not all about standing in a corner and having a tantrum. Negotiations are about what you get at the other end. That’s what I’m focused on now.”

After meeting this week with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard, Notley had seemed to suggest Quebec’s view of Alberta policy might be crucial to getting approval for the $12-billion Energy East oil pipeline.

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On Thursday she replied: “Under no circumstances would I now or would I ever do such a thing, and it is really quite ridiculous to suggest it.”

“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not linking it in any way.

“All I’m acknowledging is that it’s going to be helpful … to be able to talk to people about genuine efforts you are making to be environmentally responsible.”

Canadians elsewhere recognize that the energy sector creates jobs, she said, “but those same people need to feel that the best work that can be done is being done, to ensure that the industry is acting environmentally responsibly.

“That’s not linking any specific demand of Quebec to ours. It’s simply acknowledging that the two can work together.”

Told of her response on the veto issue, Wall said, “If she said she’s not, I think that’s positive.

“I’m guessing there’s been some second thought on the part of the premier perhaps, and she’s made the right decision.”

After Notley suggested on television Thursday that he was showboating, Wall replied: “If standing up for the industry that’s so important to our province is showboating in any way, show me to the bridge.”

Notley’s rebuttal to all that isn’t recorded, and maybe that’s best. It might be unprintable.

The debate has escalated wildly since I raised the veto issue two days ago. That may have a lot to do with upcoming elections and partisan rivalries between Notley’s NDP, the federal Conservatives, and Wall’s right-tilting Saskatchewan Party.

Notley counters that her goal “is about getting a pipeline, not about positioning.”

I’m not going to speak to what the motivations are of Premier Wall. What I am going to say is that from my perspective, the best strategy is to conduct myself like a mature player on the national level, and have thoughtful, intelligent, responsive conversations with my colleagues, and see where that takes us

“I’m not going to speak to what the motivations are of Premier Wall. What I am going to say is that from my perspective, the best strategy is to conduct myself like a mature player on the national level, and have thoughtful, intelligent, responsive conversations with my colleagues, and see where that takes us.

“That’s the approach I’m going to take and so I’ll let Mr. Wall do what Mr. Wall wants to do.”

“What I can do is not pick a fight, what I can do is try to develop consensus for what it is our industry needs to have happen, in order to ensure its prosperity at the same time that we’re asking it to acknowledge its environmental responsibilities.”

This spat between western premiers at a national conference is unprecedented, which does not make it a good thing.

One way the West gained national influence in the 1970s and 1980s was through rock-solid unity across four provinces.

The western premiers used to meet beforehand to work out positions on various issues. They once drove Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau half-mad with their Four Amigos routine.

Alberta PC Premier Peter Lougheed and his Saskatchewan counterpart, New Democrat Allan Blakeney, were the intellectual leaders who patrolled a formidable western front.

We’re a long way from that now. Down east, there will be a chuckle or two in the Ontario and Quebec delegations.

Zako’s fling with sovereignty might have been brief but was reportedly quite passionate.

In a 2013 blog for French-language magazine L’actualité, veteran political commentator Josée Legault quoted part of a speech Zako gave at Option nationale’s convention that reportedly thrilled the crowd.

“I am a Quebecer and proud of it,” she was quoted as saying. “I have had two children in Quebec. Quebec is their homeland, their country and my country. I want to give my children a country. I am looking forward to exchanging my Canadian passport for a Quebec one.”

Moreover, in a document submitted to the 2013 convention, Zako wrote: “I have followed Quebec politics, analyzed situations and it is time for me to choose. So I have decided to fight for QUEBEC INDEPENDENCE.”

The NDP said it isn’t bothered by Zako’s former political affiliation.

Party spokesman Marc-Andre Viau said Zako’s community service exposed her to different political parties at the provincial and municipal level.

“She was interested in the political adventure … and quickly realized that the sovereignist option was not for her,” he said in an email.

Asked whether Quebec’s future should be as a province or a country, Zako replied: “That’s a very, very good question. But nowadays I am a federalist. I’m working with the NDP.”

Zako will be up against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who has held Papineau since 2008.

SHERBROOKE, Que. — A Quebec judge has rejected Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd.’s challenge of a court settlement that is aimed at compensating residents of Lac-Megantic, Que.

About 25 companies accused of responsibility in the 2013 train tragedy that killed 47 people have put up a fund of $431.5 million.

The settlement was being opposed by Canadian Pacific.

The company wanted Superior Court Justice Gaetan Dumas to declare the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings for the railway responsible for the disaster — Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway Ltd. — illegitimate.

It argued the case should be heard in Federal Court, not Quebec Superior Court.

CP also wanted Dumas to rule that the settlement fund was unfair because it would have limited the railway company’s ability to countersue the other firms involved in the tragedy.

In his ruling Monday, Dumas stated that Superior Court has legitimate jurisdiction and that the settlement process to compensate victims can go ahead.

CP said Monday it would review the decision and that it would have no other immediate comment.

A lawyer for the railway company said last month the terms of the settlement fund were unfair and would limit its ability to defend itself in court.

The fund was unanimously accepted by victims and creditors of the disaster during a June 8 meeting.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho, SQWrecked oil tankers and debris from a runaway train in Lac-Megantic, Que. are pictured July 8, 2013. Periodic flurries of federal regulation, rule-making and reassurance followed the rail disaster last July that killed 47 people, destroyed dozens of buildings and contaminated waterways in a small Quebec town.

On July 6, 2013, an unmanned train owned by the Montreal Maine and Atlantic Railway Ltd. (MMA) roared into Lac-Megantic and derailed, with its cargo exploding and decimating part of the downtown core.

MMA didn’t have enough insurance to pay damages to victims and creditors, so it filed for bankruptcy in the United States and Canada. The settlement fund is tied to the bankruptcy proceedings on both sides of the border.

The terms of the fund offer all the companies that are giving money a full release from legal liability for the disaster in both the United States and Canada.

While CP has said previously it doesn’t dispute that families of the victims deserve compensation, it insists it was not responsible for what happened.

The problem for CP is if any of the 25 companies decides to sue it to recoup money put toward the fund. Being freed from liability means CP wouldn’t be able to countersue.

Riendeau also argued that the fund is technically illegal because Canada’s bankruptcy process doesn’t allow third parties to be fully released from liabilities in certain types of insolvency proceedings such as the one involving MMA.

The approved plan would see just under $200 million go to the government of Quebec and the town of Lac-Megantic for cleanup and other related costs.

About $111 million would be distributed to families of the deceased and the remaining millions are reserved for other claims such as psychological and material damages suffered as a result of the train derailment.

As much as $21 million is earmarked for lawyers’ fees.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/quebec-judge-denies-cp-rails-challenge-of-lac-megantic-431-5-million-settlement/feed1stdFirefighters douse blazes after a freight train loaded with oil derailed in Lac-Megantic in Canada's Quebec province on June 6, 2013.THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho, SQEdmund Coates: Bound by historical myths and grudges, the Quebec legislature does English citizens a disservicehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/edmund-coates-bound-by-historical-myths-and-grudges-the-quebec-legislature-does-english-citizens-a-disservice
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Quebec’s legislature is denying a historic right owed to English-speaking citizens, one which ensures democratic transparency and promotes the quality of legislation. The National Assembly of Quebec denies its English-speaking members, and the public, access to the evolving English text of legislation. At times, the final English text does not even exist yet when the National Assembly takes its final vote enacting a law.

By contrast, the province of Ontario has expended significant effort to ensure that its laws are equally accessible and are of equal quality in English and in French, although Ontario is under no constitutional obligation to do so. The public general acts of Ontario have been enacted in French and English since 1991. The pre-existing laws, consolidated in the Revised Statutes of Ontario, were also rendered into French. The French and English texts of all this legislation have the same status before Ontario’s courts.

The present neglect of English at the National Assembly is a legacy of a hard-line faction of the Parti Québécois, headed by Camille Laurin, psychiatrist and Minister of Cultural Development. Dr. Laurin’s politics were driven by his psychoanalytic theories. He believed that the personalities of his French-speaking Québécois patients carried deep traumas from the conquest of Quebec in 1760. According to Dr. Laurin: “this collective history was preventing [the Québécois] from developing the behaviours of happy individuals.” For Dr. Laurin, the first step in treating this societal illness was to purge English from the National Assembly, from Quebec’s laws, from Quebec’s schools, from Quebec’s workplaces, as well as from Quebec’s streets, shops and business.

Quebec had a long history of evolving respect for French and English in the legislature, going back to Lower Canada’s first elected Assembly in 1793. When Upper and Lower Canada (predecessors of Ontario and Quebec) were united in 1841 to create the Province of Canada, this did lead to a period of linguistic controversy. Yet mutual understanding prevailed, and it was settled in 1849 that laws would be enacted in French and English, with both texts equally official.

In 1867, the constitution of a newly confederated Canada enshrined the status of French and English for the federal Parliament and Quebec’s legislature. Subsequent Constitution Acts enshrined the status of French and English with respect to the legislatures of Manitoba and New Brunswick.

When the English text has been neglected at the legislature, the discordances, ambiguities or conceptual misunderstandings can lead to years of litigation and uncertainty.

The French text and the English text of Quebec’s laws are both authoritative. Courts cannot assume that one or the other text better expresses legislative intent. When faced with an ambiguity or divergence, courts must take both texts into account and attempt to harmonize them. When the English text has been neglected at the legislature, the discordances, ambiguities or conceptual misunderstandings can lead to years of litigation and uncertainty.

At the vote for first reading, the National Assembly receives the initial French and English texts of a draft law. The French text is studied by a committee of the Assembly, resulting in a set of proposed amendments to the bill.

However, the English text of the amendments is not usually available before the Assembly votes to incorporate them into the bill. Individual members of the Assembly have asked to have access to the English text, but the Speaker has ruled against them, specifically refusing to take the Constitution of Canada into account. The Supreme Court of Canada has found that the Constitution requires simultaneous use of both English and French, throughout the process of enacting bills into law at the National Assembly.

The English text may not even exist when the National Assembly gives final approval to a law, at the vote for third reading. This typically occurs with bills passed under closure, a procedure which reduces debates to a minimum, or bills passed in the rush before a winter or summer break. On those occasions, the Assembly’s translators labour under particularly tight deadlines: a race against the clock to produce the final English text, in the brief interval between the vote and the lieutenant-governor’s signing ceremony.

The situation is entirely different in Manitoba, New Brunswick and at the federal Parliament. Any proposed amendment must be submitted with its French and English texts, before the proposal can be debated and before a vote can take place.

Quebec’s National Assembly should learn from the examples of the other provinces and that of the federal Parliament. The National Assembly should set aside historical myths and grudges, and recall the long history of mutual respect which preceded the current neglect of English. Members of the National Assembly swear that they will carry out their duties “honestly and justly in conformity with the constitution of Québec.” But they have no less obligation to the constitution of Canada.

National Post

Edmund Coates participated, as a legislative counsel, in an extensive revision of the English text of the Civil Code of Québec.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/edmund-coates-bound-by-historical-myths-and-grudges-the-quebec-legislature-does-english-citizens-a-disservice/feed0stdQuebec flagfb‘Since 1990 we have imploded’: Mohawks at Oka won the battle, but may have lost the warhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/since-1990-we-have-imploded-mohawks-at-oka-won-the-battle-but-they-lost-the-war
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KANESATAKE, QUE. — Just before sunrise on Wednesday July 11, 1990, a rag-tag band of Mohawks armed with revolvers, hunting rifles, aluminum baseball bats, and at least one tripod-mounted AK47 assault rifle, join a barricade near the village of Oka.

They are about 60 kilometres west of Montreal, at a sleepy spot known for cheese made by local monks until members of the Mohawk community here, called Kanesatake, decided to stand up against the expansion of a nine-hole golf course, a plan that would encroach on a pine forest which they consider sacred, and theirs.

Now, dozens of police are bearing down on the crowd, which includes women and children. They give the natives till 8 a.m. to disperse. They stay put. Officers start lobbing canisters of tear gas. Gunfire eventually erupts. Cpl. Marcel Lemay is shot dead.

So began the Oka Crisis – which lasted 78 days.

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The town ultimately abandoned the golf course expansion and sold the land to Ottawa for transfer to the Mohawks. It was a rare native triumph. And for a young reporter, paid to camp and hike, meet federal leaders and international press, a total blast.

But when I called a friend in Oka to say I planned a visit for the 25th anniversary, he refused to be interviewed.

“I got so much hatred when I spoke out then. I am old now. I cannot handle more abuse,” he said. “Nothing is solved. This is still a very divided place.”

He was right. Twenty-five years later, I expected to find a feel-good story of progress and success in Kanesatake. Instead I found a community struggling with poverty, lawlessness and bitterness. These Mohawks may have won the battle at Oka, but they lost the war.

Where the conflict began now stands a lacrosse box, a playing field enclosed by plywood walls, on top of which flutters a Mohawk Warrior flag. Every July 11, a holiday here, locals play the game invented by natives.

Laura Pedersen / National PostThe main road into Kanesatake from Oka.

But beyond that show of pride, this is now a vulgar strip, like a mini Las Vegas in the woods of Quebec: about two dozen garish shops sell cut-rate cigarettes and tobacco. Although Ottawa confirmed the status of this land as Mohawk with what’s called the Kanesatake Interim Land Base Governance Act there has been no organized handover. Instead, the community was left with a no-mans-land – neither native reserve nor municipal park.

Into the vacuum have stepped native entrepreneurs, who have built one-storey wood shacks where they sell tobacco products smuggled across the border from factories on a Mohawk reserve in upstate New York.

“Can you imagine the federal government allowing people to do whatever they want on a piece of Crown land, like a national park?” asks a well-placed expert on native law. “That’s what happened with those smoke shacks. Do what you can and good luck to you.'”

Business with non-native customers seems to be brisk, and locals tell me they employ some Mohawks. Even so, I am told that unemployment is a problem and many young people leave the community.

Many non-natives have also left. Between 1991 and 2007, they sold their houses to the federal government. Ottawa says it spent $35-million to buy 177 properties in the area. But like the land by the original golf course, there has never been an organized process to allocate the properties – more than 175 houses – to the Mohawks. Locals claim that members of the band simply grabbed houses at random. They live there with no certificates of possession and they pay no rent.

“[The government] should have said, ‘We’ve got this many houses, who needs what?’ ” says Mohawk resident Tahkwa Nelson, a DJ at CKHQ, the local radio station, “instead of saying, ‘Here you go, figure it out among yourselves.’ Then everybody started fighting over the houses.”

The anarchy extended to the local government, the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake. The destabilized community, plagued by infighting and a divided council, became a haven for drug trafficking, locals say. So in 2004 Grand Chief James
Gabriel attempted to arrest the bad apples with the help of Kanesatake police and 60 aboriginal officers from outside the community. Locals responded with a barricade across the highway. They surrounded the police station and pelted it with rocks. Then they set their grand chief’s house ablaze. Today the police station, built with federal money, is an abandoned wreck.

Laura Pedersen / National PostKanesatake Mohawk Grand Chief Serge Simon poses for a portrait at the "pines," the site where the Oka Crisis began in 1990 in Oka, Quebec on Thursday, April 9, 2015.

“Since 1990 we have imploded,” says Serge Simon, 53, a father of five who is now the Grand Chief. The Oka standoff reawakened and galvanized native pride across Canada. But at home, he says, “we haven’t had a single council that was united. The site of the Oka Crisis is the only real place that hasn’t benefited from its sacrifice.”

Things are looking up, however. A fact sheet provided by the federal government touts construction of a health centre, an elders’ home and a youth centre at Kanesatake. And Simon insists that today the politics are stabilizing. “Now I am in my second mandate and we have a united council.”

There’s also hope for reconciliation with the wider community. For the first time Kanesatake has a grand chief who speaks fluent French. On July 11, Simon plans to walk down the hill where the barricade lay 25 years ago and shake hands with Oka mayor Pierre Quevillon.

Laura Pedersen / National PostThe CKHQ Kanehsatake Radio 101.7 FM radio station building in Kanesatake.

But the most important reconciliation may be among the Mohawks themselves.

North of Highway 344, an ancient trailer in a field of mud in the hills offers one sign of progress. The floors are plywood. Fly paper hangs from the ceiling. A curtain of black plastic flutters inside the door. But this is also the home of CKHQ 101.7 FM, United Voices Radio.

Run by Beverly Nelson during the Oka crisis as a way to keep Mohawks informed of police and military action, it has been revived by her son James and two friends. “It’s going to take time to get along. It may not happen in my lifetime,” says James Nelson. But he believes the radio is a way to rebuild community.

Laura Pedersen / National Post James Nelson, a radio DJ at CKHQ Kanehsatake Radio 101.7 FM, picks up one of the bingo numbers used for Wednesday night bingo at the radio station.

They chased out the mice. They held radiothons to fix the ceiling. The station threw a halloween costume party. They brought back radio bingo. In the morning Tahkwa Neslon plays country music. After lunch, his cousin James, whose DJ name is Moose, plays rock and roll.

From the banged-up mixing board Tom Petty’s Refugee blares:

“Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have kicked you around some,” Petty sings. “Everybody has to fight to be free. You see, you don’t have to live like a refugee.”

MONTREAL — In April 2014, prominent Quebec City lawyer Lu Chan Khuong was detained after she walked out of a department store without paying for two pairs of jeans.

She avoided trial and publicity by accepting the Crown’s suggestion the case be dealt with “non-judicially” as part of a program to avoid cluttering up the courts with minor offences.

That, she hoped, was that. In May she was elected president of the provincial law society, the Barreau du Québec. “I will be the spokesperson for justice,” she declared when she took office last month.

But after a newspaper reported her brush with the law last week, the Barreau’s board of directors indefinitely suspended Khuong. Now, she is portraying herself as a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

The clash, which has shaken the professional order representing Quebec’s 25,000 lawyers, escalated Thursday when Khuong’s lawyer sent a letter to the Barreau threatening legal action if she is not immediately reinstated and given a public apology.

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In a statement, Khuong, 45, said she wants to return to the presidency to end “extravagant spending” at the Barreau and improve access to justice.

“I will not be distracted by a few individuals who, by illegal and immoral means, attempt to sabotage the election result,” she said.

The uproar in the normally staid law society was sparked by a July 1 report in La Presse revealing Khuong’s arrest for shoplifting.

When the reporter first raised the matter, she initially said she did not know what he was talking about. She later called back to confirm the arrest, explaining she had been caught by surprise in the initial interview.

She said she had entered a Simon’s store in the Montreal suburb of Laval with clothing she had bought at a Quebec City outlet of the same chain. After trying on several items, she said, she mistakenly paid a second time for the clothes from Quebec City and neglected to pay for the two pairs of jeans from the Laval store. The jeans cost more than $400.

Police were called after an employee stopped Khuong outside the store. She maintains her innocence and says a moment of distraction is to blame.

“It’s a distraction of the sort that happens to thousands of people every year,” her lawyer, Jean-François Bertrand, said Thursday.

“We all know someone this has happened to, accidentally leaving a store with something that hasn’t been paid for.”

In his letter to the Barreau, Bertrand said Khuong accepted the offer of non-judicial treatment to avoid the media coverage of a trial.

Because she was well known in Quebec — she was elected vice-president of the Barreau in May 2014 and is married to a former provincial justice minister, Marc Bellemare — her trial would have been “the most heavily covered for a shoplifting charge in the history of Quebec,” he wrote.

Under the rules of Quebec’s program dealing with minor offences non-judicially, a record of the alleged infraction is maintained for five years in a confidential registry available only to prosecutors. It can only be invoked if the person is charged with another offence. After five years, the slate is wiped clean.

The board of directors judges that the role of president demands a high level of integrity necessary to maintain confidence in the institution

Khuong’s explanation to La Presse why she chose the non-judicial avenue contributed to the decision by the Barreau’s board to suspend her. She said she wanted to avoid media coverage and “wasting my time at court.”

The 11-member board asked her to resign after learning of the alleged infraction through the questions of La Presse’s reporter, but she refused. The board then decided unanimously to suspend her at an emergency meeting July 1.

“The board of directors judges that the role of president demands a high level of integrity necessary to maintain confidence in the institution,” the Barreau said in a statement announcing her suspension. It said some of Khuong’s statements to the newspaper on the functioning of the justice system were troubling.

In the letter demanding a reinstatement and an apology, Bertrand argued the Barreau trampled over the rules of natural justice, including the presumption of innocence. He said Khuong was under no obligation to divulge her alleged offence. In fact, to do so would have twisted the purpose of the non-judicial program, which aims to preserve confidentiality.

Instead of going after his client, Bertrand wrote, the Barreau should be demanding an inquiry into the leak of confidential information to La Presse.

Khuong, who was elected to a two-year term with 63 per cent of the vote over Montreal lawyer Luc Deshaies, has received support from several regional sections of the Barreau demanding the lifting of her suspension.

Thursday, the Quebec section of the Canadian Bar Association joined the chorus, saying it is “very concerned about the crisis shaking the Barreau du Québec since July 1.” It said the suspension seems “contrary to principles of fundamental justice.”

A confrontation appears to be brewing between the Kahnawake Mohawk Council in Quebec and the federal department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. A letter obtained by the Montreal Gazette suggests that, in response to a Charter of Rights challenge to the band’s infamous 1981 “marry out, get out” rule, the feds are claiming authority over the band’s membership list. This would give Ottawa the power to prevent the band from forcing Mohawks off the reserve for choosing to “marry out” — that is, to marry a non-Mohawk — at least until the legality of the rule is either confirmed or rejected by the courts.

It remains unclear how they will ultimately rule. The Supreme Court of Canada has proved only too willing to sacrifice individual rights where the higher priority of group rights is asserted, as in Quebec’s Charter of the French Language (Bill 101): only the most absurd excesses of the bill were pruned. It is possible the judges might be equally receptive were the band to argue, following Quebec’s example, that its small population and cultural fragility — the part of the dreaded Anglos here being played by Mohawks who desire to marry and live with their beloveds — justified the ban. Claims of aboriginal rights would also likely count in the band’s favour.

The issue at stake here is not whether a social or demographic group may decide who qualifies as a member for cultural or religious purposes. It is an argument about how far such decisions may be allowed to override individual rights. The Kahwawake law does not confine itself merely to stipulating that non-Mohawks may not live on the reserve — a premise that would not be countenanced in any non-aboriginal community — but denies the same right to Mohawks themselves, already living on the reserve, for the crime of marrying (and cohabiting with) non-Mohawk.

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Whatever the complex web of separate legal arrangements Canada has devised with regard to aboriginal Canadians, this policy ought to be denounced as odious. The Kahnawake Mohawks may well prefer that members of the community marry within the group, as many other minorities do. But like any other majority, they cross the line once they start to coerce individuals into conformity with their preferences. At that point the interests of the courts, and of the larger community around them, are engaged. Canada was founded, in part, to protect individual and minority rights from the depredations of local majorities.

At the very least, it is incumbent upon other Canadians not to stay silent on the matter, whether out of some misplaced fear of being thought intolerant or cultural-relativist confusion. Even if the courts were eventually to rule that it was lawful, it would still be wrong. It is entirely possible for a group to maintain its traditions and culture without such dubious and overbearing measures. The pressure on non-Mohawk spouses — to assimilate into the way of life of the reserve, to raise and educate their children as Mohawks and so on — would be enough, without forcibly evicting them from the community.

Neither can such a policy of ethnic homogeneity be divorced from the tactics of intimidation, which have been employed to enforce it. Resorting to racial taunts and vandalism, as some in the reserve have, suggests an objective that is more racial, and racist, than advertised. That Kahnawake Grand Chief Joe Norton cannot bring himself to condemn such vigilante acts against non-Mohawks without reiterating that they have no place on the reserve is disappointing at best.

To head off the inevitable caricature: no one is suggesting aboriginal Canadians should govern themselves in exactly the same way, or under an identical system of laws, as non-aboriginal Canadians. But there are limits to how far this asymmetry can be pushed. Miscegenation laws have no place in modern Canada, and the federal government is right to step in.

From the lectern at Place Bonaventure, Ghislain Picard made a point of thanking the federal and provincial politicians who chose to sit among hundreds of Canada’s First Nations chiefs gathered in Montreal.

He carefully singled them out, naming Romeo Saganash from the New Democratic Party, Carolyn Bennett from the federal Liberal Party and Quebec Aboriginal Affairs minister Geoffrey Kelley. Then, in a moment of pure political theatre, he seemed to point to an empty seat in the front row of the conference centre.

“I would have liked to thank somebody from the federal government today but obviously that’s not the case,” said Picard, the Quebec regional chief for the Assembly of First Nations. The verbal jab elicited cheers from the audience.

Opponents of the Conservatives seized on their absence from the AFN’s general assembly Tuesday to decry what they say is a broken relationship between Canada’s First Nations and the federal government.

“To me the fact that the government is not represented at this assembly, this week, with a federal election in October, it’s a perfect testimony of where they stand on indigenous issues in this country,” said Picard. “The last time they bothered to return my calls, it’s so far back I can’t remember.”

Picard pointed to recent news reports that the Conservatives have allowed $1 billion in First Nations funding lapses in the past five years. These cuts come despite chronic poverty on reserves across the country and a national aboriginal housing crisis, according to a recent Senate report.

AFN National Chief Perry Bellegarde is seizing on this so-called broken relationship to orchestrate a national voter registration movement in hopes that First Nations will have an impact on October’s federal elections. Bellegarde has identified 51 ridings that could be in play but only a few of those are within Quebec.

Meanwhile, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal boss Justin Trudeau were in Montreal Tuesday to court the AFN leadership. Both party leaders spoke before the assembly and its delegates.

Though voter turnout has traditionally been low among Quebec First Nations, Picard says things could change in the coming election.

“In light of the very exceptional political context today, after nine years of the Conservatives in power and to see so much distrust from our community toward the federal government, things might change,” he said.

For his part, Kahnawake grand chief Joe Norton says he won’t call on his people to vote in federal elections and said he won’t engage with Ottawa through traditional channels.

“We’ll force them to the table, that’s the only way we’ll meet with the federal government,” said Norton. “We’re all for cooperation… But they have to come to the table.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/assembly-of-first-nations-chief-calls-for-mass-voter-registration-in-hope-of-ousting-conservatives/feed0stdassembly-of-first-nations-national-chief-perry-bellegarde-giDoctors refuse man’s request to have organs donated because he was conscious just before deathhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/mans-request-to-have-organs-donated-refused-because-he-was-conscious-just-before-death
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/mans-request-to-have-organs-donated-refused-because-he-was-conscious-just-before-death#commentsTue, 07 Jul 2015 23:42:11 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=816947

The patient lying in a Quebec hospital had been left so completely paralyzed by a devastating accident, only a mechanical ventilator kept him breathing, and alive.

He was mentally sound, however, able to communicate and had a clear request for medical staff: he wanted life support turned off. And he wanted to donate his organs for transplant, helping offset the severe shortage nationwide.

But in a case that has raised novel ethical questions and roiled the province’s transplant world, the man died without his last request being honoured. Despite the desperate need for them, his organs were never harvested, an ethicist familiar with the incident has revealed.

Surgeons were uneasy about procuring organs from someone who was not only alive a few minutes earlier, but aware and communicative, says Julie Allard, who raised the issue at a recent conference of the Canadian Bioethics Society.

The man was in a unique position to decide his own fate, and doctors were fearful that starting the transplant process could put undue pressure on him to choose death, said the University of Montreal doctoral student and consultant to Transplant Quebec.

Until nine years ago in Canada, the scenario could not even have arisen, as organs were taken only from people declared brain-dead.

“There were so many questions,” Allard said about the discussion triggered by the case.

“There was a big reflection in all the transplant community in Quebec about donations by conscious patients … Not all the surgeons are comfortable with it.”

Transplant Quebec, which oversees the field, eventually polled surgeons about the issue and made up a list of those who would be willing to operate if a similar situation arose, she said.

Though rare, the case could have added relevance as Canada moves toward legalized, physician-aided death, raising the spectre of people consciously offering their organs before dying, said the ethicist.

In the first decades of transplant medicine, organs were taken from patients declared brain-dead, a concept that emerged in the 1970s after the advent of ventilators that could keep hearts and lungs working indefinitely.

But with the continuing shortage of organs — and hundreds of people dying yearly on transplant wait lists — Canadian experts decided in 2006 to adopt what is called donation after cardiac death.

In those cases, doctors do not wait for brain death, but begin the organ procurement process a few minutes after the heart has stopped beating, adding to the pool of potential donors.

Investigators from Quebec’s anti-corruption unit were granted entry to the morgue in Panama City on Monday afternoon, but informed they’d only be able to view the body.

Spokeswoman Anne-Frederick Laurence said DNA and fingerprint analysis will be held at the earliest on Tuesday and that visual identification alone likely wouldn’t be enough to convince Canadian authorities.

News that Porter had died last week has been treated with heavy skepticism by authorities in the province where he faces fraud charges.

Porter’s biographer, doctor and relatives have said he succumbed to cancer in Panama, where he’d been detained since May 2013.

But without official confirmation from Panamanian officials or an independent source, Quebec authorities sent two of their own on Friday to see first hand.

Porter is one of several people facing charges stemming from the awarding of a $1.3-billion contract to build a superhospital in Montreal which officially opened this year.

The alleged $22.5-million fraud has been described by one Quebec provincial police investigator as one of the largest corruption cases in Canadian history.

The prosecutor involved has said she won’t close the books on Porter’s criminal proceedings — charges that include fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and breach of trust — without confirmation of his passing.

A preliminary hearing was held earlier this year for the other co-accused in the case.

Porter, 59, denied any wrongdoing while he fought extradition to Canada from a Panamanian prison over the past 26 months as he battled self-diagnosed terminal cancer.

In May, he was transferred to a cancer clinic where he was receiving treatment. His doctor said he’d been treating himself while imprisoned.

A report in Montreal La Presse on Monday from a journalist outside the morgue noted the Quebec investigators entered the building, but Laurence said it was too early to say if they’d seen the body.

She added that a formal request to repatriate Porter’s remains is being considered.

“We’ll start by identifying the body first and after that we’ll see what’s necessary and what isn’t,” Laurence said. “We’ll judge accordingly … it could be an option, but that doesn’t mean it’s the avenue that will be chosen.”

Porter was the former head of Montreal’s McGill University Health Centre and was also once appointed head of Canada’s spy watchdog agency by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Julie Snyder, engaged to Parti Québécois leader Pierre Karl Péladeau, is known as one of Quebec’s leading feminists. A successful, prolific TV producer and presenter who also had great success in France, she even helped launch a feminist mini-movement in 2012 dubbed Les Janettes.

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(This was the feminist group that argued in favour of Quebec’s Charter of Values on the grounds that religious accommodation would undermine women’s rights. That support went hilariously off the rails when the head of the group, Janette Bertrand, offered a bizarre argument about Muslim men crowding women out of a public pool. But anyway…)

It irks me, then, that Snyder plays the damsel in distress as the finance ministry cuts a tax credit to her company, les Productions J. She is claiming the benefit was rescinded thanks to her relationship with Péladeau. A sexist attack, she said; a political attack on her fiancé; a campaign to bankrupt her small empire.

This is a dubious claim. Firstly, Snyder’s company wasn’t eligible for the tax credit until the Parti Québécois came to power and changed the rules in 2014, just before the election. The Liberal government then changed the requirements — and at least one PQ premier agreed with the principle. Secondly, under current regime, the credit only applies to independent businesses — as Productions J sells more than half of her content to Quebecor-owned TVA, the company is no longer classed as “independent.” Snyder has made herself, unfortunately, quite dependent on her spouse.

For a supposed serious businessperson, Snyder’s emotional outbursts are getting uncomfortable. On at least two occasions, Snyder has been visibly distraught, tearing up at the prospect of losing television subsidies.

If Snyder has a compelling argument for receiving government money to produce what we’re told are staples of Québécois culture, like the French version of The Voice, the French version of Deal or No Deal and Occupation Double, a sleazefest inside a Spanish villa, then she should make that argument. If she believes she is under attack, she should fight back, as any self-respecting businessperson would. She could have called a different kind of press conference, announcing that the Liberal government can go straight to hell and, as a strong and successful businessperson, that cheesy reality show will be made with or without their stinkin’ money!

This is bad PR for Quebec feminism.

But the tears are easier; it also makes for good TV, and Snyder knows good TV. If her emotional pleas for public funds worked on Liberals once before, it stands to reason that it could work again. It sure beats working; getting on the phone to secure capital from banks or private investors. Why prove the doubters wrong; why prove your business model when you can make a teary plea for more public money, citing (most ambiguously) sexism?

Far from the comportment of a leading feminist, Snyder’s approach to the issue of her government grants has been insulting to feminism, which thrives in a place with an abundance of strong, successful female leaders who mostly do not beg for government money and certainly do not cry in public. This is bad PR for Quebec feminism. If she cannot pull herself together, if any person is unable to pull him or herself together repeatedly when arguing a point on a given policy issue, they should refrain from making policy arguments on that issue (and no, asking a leading feminist not to cry over her subsidies in public isn’t sexism; refraining from making the same critique many would make of a male leader would be).

Being a bleating ball of histrionics in public over non-life-threatening policy issues points to one of two scenarios: A lack of preparedness and confidence in one’s opinions, or acting. Continuing to subject Quebecers to these displays will only undermine her own credibility as a purported feminist, as it will, ever so slightly, undermine all of Quebec’s feminism.

John Mahoney/PostmediaPierre Karl Péladeau's partner Julie Snyder .

While the stressors of entrepreneurship are undoubtedly a burden for Snyder, losing one’s composure while appealing – nay, demanding – public funds is a distasteful manifestation of the First World Problem in any man or woman. While her employees conceivably shed tears on occasion over their mortgage payments, Snyder has no mortgage payments because she’s a millionaire and her partner is a billionaire.

On the spectrums of tragedy and outrage, losing a few television subsides should rank fairly low; many Quebecers, Snyder might be even more distraught to learn, will live their entire lives without receiving one single television subsidy. She should reflect on their struggles instead of manufacturing her own in a thinly-veiled attempt to embarrass the very same government her husband seeks to replace.
Dan Delmar is a political commentator and host with CJAD 800 Montreal, and a managing partner with Provocateur Communications. Twitter.com/DanDelmar